The automation of a manufacturing process typically requires the use of several technologies such as control system, information, robotic technologies and others. However, certain manufacturing processes are too costly to fully automate or cannot be automated due to technological limitations. These include manufacturing processes for low volume production runs of a special order product, for example, where the costs of automating an engineered to order process are not economically justifiable. As a result, non-automated or partially automated manufacturing processes are used in order to reduce costs.
Partially automated manufacturing processes include several tasks such as order entry, inspection or quality control tasks for determining whether a product has a defect and others. In particular, aspects of a quality control task may be performed by a human inspector. Further, it is desirable to keep track of production efficiency and hand worker effectiveness and to provide feedback in order to improve a partially automated process. Therefore, there is a need for a system which improves aspects of a partially automated manufacturing process.